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T O P I C R E V I E W

spaced out

There's been a whole series of appalling forgeries of Apollo 11 crew signatures on Tintin albums sold this year for enormous sums at auctions in Paris.

In each case the album "Objectif Lune" or "On a Marché sur la Lune" is signed by the author Hergé and by all three astronauts. I'm not an expert in Hergé's signature but they at least look convincing and may well be authentic. The astronaut signatures are very bad forgeries however, with the exception of the Collins in a couple of cases.

These have sold for $16k to $52k so some people have made some very bad purchases, and one or more forgers have made a lot of money from their crime.

As can be seen below three of the forgeries (from two different auctions) are by the same forger who presumably acquired a number of Hergé signed albums to work on. The other two may be from the same forger but practising a different style, as the Aldrin signatures are pretty similar.

Unfortunately, I only saw all these auction after the event. The Artcurial auction result was reported in an online news article complete with a picture of one of the Apollo 11 'signed' pages which is what caught my eye. I did contact the auction house but I didn't get the impression that they were convinced or too interested in doing anything about it.

So I just thought I'd bring it up here so that maybe we might be able to alert people to the prevalence of these forgeries and possibly to catch some of the them in future before the auction is held.

Nice way to ruin good Tintins! I have a complete set in French and getting them in the US was not cheap. of course, it was cheaper than these! From what I can see, the Hergé signatures look okay. The only one I would say is definitely real is the first one.

It surprises me that someone actually bought these. Don't people do research before they spend huge amounts of money?

Steve Zarelli

Odious.

The good news is there is no danger of these fooling anyone with even a passing familiarity with the three signatures.

Steve Zarelli

quote:Originally posted by AJ: The only one I would say is definitely real is the first one.

You mean the Apollo 11 signatures in lot 474?

Those are fake too, in my opinion.

AJ

No, sorry, I should have been clearer. I was only referring to the Hergé signature.

spaced out

quote:Originally posted by AJ:It surprises me that someone actually bought these. Don't people do research before they spend huge amounts of money?

I think they believe that the auction house has researched the item fully and are guaranteeing it to be genuine.

In reality, the auction house only guarantees an item for 30 days after the sale, during which period they will refund the buyer if he/she provides expert proof that it is forged.

After 30 days the auction house gets to pocket the fees and the buyer has no recourse.

So when someone contacts the auction house before or shortly after the auction telling them it's a fake they might say thanks for your interesting opinion but it's actually in their interest to just keep quiet and hope the buyer doesn't notice anything amiss. They can always argue that your message was just one opinion expressed of many so they had no reason to act on it.

cspg

Why TinTin? And not Tintin?

Tykeanaut

TinTin or not Tintin... that is the question!

stsmithva

Those are some really odd examples of forgeries - they are in apparently genuine, potentially valuable, but totally unrelated to space items; and they are just amazingly bad. I know complaining about the quality of forgeries is silly, but look at the "Collins"s - a huge frantic scribble that is nowhere close. It's like someone writing a bad forgery of a J.D. Salinger handwritten letter across a genuine signed Neil Armstrong photo.

spaced out

quote:Originally posted by cspg:Why TinTin? And not Tintin?

Because I know as much about Tintin as the forgers do about the signatures of the Apollo 11 astronauts.

I'll have to leave it to Robert to correct the title of the thread...

Editor's note: Done.

JasonB

Those are the worst forgeries I've possibly ever seen and a perfect example of why a fool and his money are lucky enough to get together in the first place. Provided those prices were actually paid, those are as dumb a purchase as anyone could ever make.

AJ

quote:Originally posted by spaced out:Because I know as much about Tintin as the forgers do about the signatures of the Apollo 11 astronauts.

...but he went to the moon too!

spaceflori

As I learned the Herge autographs are apparently authentic (too bad they are ruined now with the fake Apollo 11 signatures) however one may keep in mind that the comic book itself may be of high value, so the prices realized may not be because of the Apollo 11 signatures. (though they ruin the pieces somehow...).

Again that's just my personal assumption... on the other hand I can't help myself but saying who's paying that much for obvious fakes deserves them...

stsmithva

Strange... the same French auction house that carried those horrible Apollo 11 forgeries, bizarrely on Tintin items, now has what seems to be a neat Neil Armstrong-signed Tintin page, showing the first walk on the moon in human history (to badly translate the word balloon).